"Světlana (the resistance organization) had something to do with it because there were too many of them (convicts). They gotery high sentences at the Sokol gymnasium, but not only high sentences, also the worst jails, Bory, and the uranium mines, in Jáchymov. Vláďa was first imprisoned in Bory and then in Jáchymov. He got 13 years, he went there and when he came back he was not a man, but an ill man and he lost all that... it was just not the same. So that's what happened to us, and my mother has taken against the Communists since then. It seemed to me that she'd destroy them all, she was taking revenge wherever she could. For example, we had a field in Hrušové, and she was taking a cow to the field, which is up the Syrákov hill , and there was a motorbike beside the road. She knew it was my father's motorbike, Vláďa used to ride it. It was confiscated, when he was arrested and then the biggest communist and State Security agent got it. There were steps and a cliff leading to the house. The best thing my mother could come up with was to give the motorbike a nudge and make it fall down. That was the first time she was questioned on why she did it. The police officer who was in charge of her questioning came and told her, 'Mrs. Lutonska, you do that one more time and you'll be put in jail.' And she said, 'You come here one more time and I'll pour liquid manure over you.' A few days later he came again, she had the manure ready and she really poured it all over him, it was like blasphemy for those communists. They interrogated her again, she said there were a lot of men. Then one of the communists said to her, 'Ma'am, do it one more time and we're going to take your children away and put them in re-education and take away everything you have.' My mother didn't mind anything, but the fact that they would take her children away and put them in re-education, because we were two minors and dad was no longer with us, it made my mother... she just couldn't take it anymore. She was quiet now, she wouldn't talk to anybody, she just cried and wailed. We were plowing the fields under Háj, it was in November, and it was already raining and snowing. I was at the front, my mother plowed. She cried terribly and so did I, because the weather was bad and cold, and it was raining. We only had one cow left, and it wouldn't even obey, so then we went home, devastated, and we thought it was the end of the world. That was our experience with the communists, my mother hated the whole world."
"Someone banged on the door at night, there was a lot of us at home still, all the kids: Hanka, Zdenka, Vláďa, Vlasta and I and mom. I went to open the door, as I was the fastest. A man in a leather coat was standing there and asked if Vláďa was home. I said he was. They asked where he was. They woke him up, he was newly married at the time, they woke up everyone at the house. I was all over the place, I tried everything... They said they had come to arrest him, and they told him to sit in the kitchen on a little chair. He was sitting there in his boxer shorts, shivering. He didn't know what was going on. He wanted to drink some water. Back in the day you had to pump water from a well and bring it in a bucket, but at that moment the bucket was totally empty. I hurried to pump some water in my shorts. I was wearing underwear. As I was pumping, I saw a man in a leather coat standing there and two others behind the gate. I could barely press the handle as I was afraid of what was happening. I hurried back and Vláďa drank some water. We were all so angry, especially my mother, it seemed she was going to kill those men. She was so angry that she could not even process it. She screamed, cursed, she simply revolted, so they arrested him, they had him dressed, and all the responsibilities for the whole farm were now on mom and us. Meanwhile Hanka got married, went to Zlín and we were left there all alone. The grain started to ripen. We didn't know what to do then. They sowed clover under the wheat, it grew half as high as the rye stalks, it was impossible to scythe. My mother tried to use a sickle and I tried to imitate her. It was terrible, I was in the lower secondary school. My brother’s friends, football players, came to help, but only once, before the communists said: 'Either you don't go, or we'll arrest you too.' They were scared.”
"Another thing was when I graduated and wanted to study teaching. It was important to get good grades and my mother also had to join the farmers’ cooperative. At that time they told her that either she joins the cooperative and her daughter gets accepted into the school, or she’ll have to join anyway eventually. So my mother gave our cow to the farmers’ cooperative and we were left hungry because we had no more grain, also no flour and no potatoes. The cow was really needed, we had no milk, but we still had some chickens. We lost all that. That was when I went to school to Kroměříž. That's when we lost everything."
Jarmila Rychlíková was born on January 1, 1938 in Vizovice as the sixth of seven children. Her mother, Vincencie Lutonská, first married a widower, František Hrabal, a butcher, with whom she had three children and whose two daughters she married off. He died of blood poisoning while building a house, and Vincencie was left alone with five children. She got married for the second time to Alfons Lutonský, a baker who later worked for Baťa. The mother had a small farm. During this marriage Vincencie and Alfons had two children, Jarmila and her sister Vlasta, born in 1942. During the war Jarmila lived in Vizovice, and in 1945 she saw from afar the Gestapo burning farmsteads near Loučka. In 1949 her father died in a motorcycle accident. In 1950 her brother Vladimír was arrested for political reasons and sentenced to 13 years in prison, in 1960, however, he was released as a result of amnesty. In 1953 during the currency reform the family lost all the money they had from selling her father‘s house. After graduating from the elementary school, Jarmila passed entrance exams at the Pedagogical School in Kroměříž, where she graduated in 1957. She worked as a teacher in Vizovice and its surroundings all her life. In order to be admitted to the school, her mother had to join the farmers’ cooperative. She married her childhood friend, Stanislav Rychlík, with whom she raised two children. In 2022, at the time of filming, she lived in Vizovice.
